"Our leaders' idea of promoting alternative energy is touting future, nonexistent technologies, and that false savior, ethanol. Ethanol consumes nearly as much fuel to make as it produces, while collaterally raising food prices and damaging the environment.

The latest panacea is drilling in the Arctic and offshore, a short-term solution of dubious value that is wildly popular among oilmen and congressmen up for re-election, and in the Bush administration —- which evidently hopes to use high gasoline prices as a wedge for opening off-limits areas to exploration for its Big Oil constituency.

Meanwhile, Congress has failed to take the simple step of renewing federal tax credits for wind and solar power that will expire at year's end. How have our perceived options become so narrow and skewed?

It is because without any public debate, a de facto U.S. energy policy has evolved and is now in place: to cling ever tighter to our oil-based economy and its lucrative profits for the scions of the status quo, and to marginalize all who are not on board with this.

And now we are in the exact bind that Carter tried to prevent three decades ago. Acting with promptness difficult to fathom today, our elected leaders then enacted year-round daylight-saving time, dropped the speed limit to 55 and established government price controls. And oh so fleetingly, we downsized what we drove. All gone." Atlanta Constitution-Journal

Now there are some other items in Carter's resume that don't look so good today, like the Iran hostage crisis and the Olympic boycott, and his recent activities have been questioned by some, but when it came to energy, the nuclear engineer and farmer seems to have known what he was talking about...